Thanks to everyone who made the 2024 RTS Family Conference such a great success

The RTS Support Group conferences are family events with something to interest everyone. The event in June this year was attended by over 140 people who heard from expert speakers and spent time taking part in workshops and enjoying some time making new contacts and catching up with each other.

At the brief Annual General Meeting, Elisa Bach’s official welcome to the committee team was completed as she was voted in as a Director of the charity.

Jane and Courtney took to the lectern, explaining that their work for the Cerebra Network for Neurodevelopmental Disorders, and Aston University specialises in four key areas of mental health, sleep, social characteristics and behaviours that challenge.

Jane used the analogy of a jigsaw, with many different pieces of research building up our understanding of RTS over the years, giving a much more comprehensive picture than a decade ago, but still with gaps to fill. She gave an overview of the new RTS clinical guidelines which have consolidated over 800 different publications about RTS and related topics, to produce a set of summaries for use all over the world.

We heard more from Jane and her team after lunch with a refresher on ‘Understanding RTS’, covering the fundamentals from a genetic, physical and behavioural perspective. It was fascinating to hear more about the new clinical guidelines materials and learn how these can be used by parents to inform discussions with professionals and clinicians, giving them credible and high-quality information about key topics related to RTS.

Copies of the guidelines were distributed. If you would like to download a copy, the link is below.

RTS Clinical Guidelines

Courtney provided an update on the PhD work to date, presenting back the findings of her round of interviews with RTS families, with a focus on triggers for anxiety and anger, which made for a really interesting session. Courtney is currently looking for RTS individuals aged 16 or over who could agree to take part in the study and tell us about their own emotional experiences, so if you are a parent of a child who is interested, please email Courtney at greenhc2@aston.ac.uk

Sensei Kevin

Sensei Kevin founded ‘GIFT Martial Arts UK’ to provide specialised martial arts training for people with special needs. We heard from Kevin about how he became involved in martial arts and his motivation for enabling inclusive training for all – a truly inspiring story. Kevin led a karate session before dinner, giving children and adults the opportunity to experience a one off session which everyone taking part found great fun and learned something new.

Networking, health and wellness

A lively “speed dating” style meet and greet session helped create some new family introductions and conversation. Then a series of interactive ‘Healthy Hacks’ sessions followed, delivered by Eve, Siobhan and Jane. Groups rotated between three topics covering strategies for dealing with picky eating, self-care and stress management, and dental habits and hygiene. Eve returned in the afternoon to help us all take time to unwind with a yoga and relaxation session, which was a welcome moment of calm amidst a busy day!

Teens and Up

We hosted a ‘Teens & Up’ group at our 2022 conference and were pleased to see some familiar faces joining us again this year. We had a great time catching up, getting to know some new participants and enjoying some yoga and relaxation with Eve. If you know someone who joined this group and would like to meet again virtually after the summer, please let us know.

Creche

As usual we had a lively crèche for our young attendees next door to the main conference room. It was good to have Jayne and her team at SOS Care Services back with us again. They really enjoyed looking after our “wonderful little people”.

Getting 1:1 time with the experts

We were grateful to be able to offer so many 121 sessions with our expert guests Liz, Jane, Siobhan on sleep, challenging behaviour and dental health respectively. As always, these were really popular, and it was a challenge to fit in enough sessions to accommodate everyone. If you didn’t manage to arrange an appointment and would like to set up a follow up 121 session, please let us know via the info@rtsuk.org.uk email address.

Celebrating achievements and hitting the dancefloor

The highlight of the dinner event was an awards ceremony, with lots of nominations for our young attendees who have all achieved such amazing things. It was inspirational to hear about these and to see them go up to receive their certificates from Sensei Kevin.

Our brilliant DJ Tony knew how to get lots of people up and onto the dancefloor and lots of dancing followed until we’d all completely run out of energy!

Didn’t attend the 2024 Conference? Request a copy of the content.

The PowerPoint slides presented during the conference are available to families, if you would like a copy, email info@rtsuk.org.uk and we’ll send them out to you.